Chapter VI

MAROONED

There was plenty of time for reflection in the long days that followed. The greasy-faced old mate came in and cut the lashings off Vaiti’s ankles and wrists, a few hours after sailing, and she was left free to move about the cabin, which offered a promenade of exactly seven feet by three. Meals were handed in to her three times daily—the usual black tea, tinned meat, and weevily biscuit of second-class island schooners—and she was not in any way molested, though the door was always kept locked. Donahue put in his head once or twice to look at her, as she sat cross-legged on her bunk, staring out through the port at the tumbling seas. He generally had something to say—a jarring, mocking compliment, or a remark about the time they were likely to make Sydney Heads—knowing all the time that Vaiti could estimate the general direction of their course by the sun, and that there was no southing in it. If she had ever feared any one, she feared this man—almost.

It was not difficult to understand how the capture had been brought about. A man under the bunk, another under the sofa opposite—her own eyes watching only the upper part of the cabin as reflected in the glass—nothing could be simpler or better planned. The affair was none the less ugly on that account. Perhaps it was only Vaiti’s burning anger at her utter rout and defeat in her own business of plotting and intrigue that saved her from something very like despair, as the schooner ploughed steadily on, day after day, carrying her into the great unknown, farther and farther away from all who could defend her. Yet, despairing or not, Saxon’s daughter never lost her courage. They had taken her weapons from her as they carried her into the cabin, but they could not take away her undaunted spirit. She waited her time.

As to the meaning of the business, she trusted, again, to time’s enlightenment. Saxon had many enemies; so had she. It would all come out by-and-by. Meantime, it was clear that no one meant to murder her. What else might be meant she could not tell, and she did not care to speculate overmuch. Under such circumstances one does best to save one’s nerve against the time it may be wanted.

It was on the twenty-third day out from Apia, bearing, as far as she could discover, in a north-westerly direction, that she first noted the approach of land. Nothing could be seen from her side of the ship, but she heard the long, excited cries of the island crew, and the thundering of their feet, as they began putting the ship about with unwonted vigour, to a chorus of native songs. She strained her eyes eagerly when the ship came about on the other tack, but the line of the horizon was unbroken; and it was not for another hour that she saw, from her low elevation, what the look-out in the crow’s nest had sighted long before—a line of small black bristles pricking the edge of the horizon several miles away.

Vaiti knew the sight at once for the palms of a low atoll island—evidently some barren, sun-smitten spot close up to the line—and a ready solution of the whole puzzling affair at once sprang into her mind.

Marooning!

Most people know the meaning of this term; nearly every one has heard of sailors captured by pirates in old days, and left on lonely islands, or even deserted by their own comrades on some isolated spot, with just enough food and water to save the marooners’ consciences from the guilt of actual murder. Vaiti knew both the word and the thing very well-indeed, and she was almost certain that the Ikurangi had gone off the course on the way to some South American port with the view of hiding her where she would not easily be found again. There are many islands in the wastes of the vast Pacific where a ship may not pass once in half a century, and these—unlike the typical “desert” island of stories—are almost always barren, hungry, shadeless spots, where Crusoe himself would have been hard put to it to make a decent living. The fertile, mountainous, well-watered isle is never without a native population, permanent or occasional, and is very seldom indeed, in these days, without a trader as well, and a regularly calling schooner. As for the breadfruit, oranges, pineapples, the pigs and goats, the sugarcane and maize of uninhabited islands as known to fiction, they have no counterpart in real life. All the valuable food plants and all useful animals are the product of importation and cultivation, ancient or modern. It follows, that where there are no people and no ships, there is nothing worth having.

Vaiti knew this very well, and decided that if she was going to be marooned, she might as well make such provision as circumstances allowed. She had hunted over every inch of the cabin—which seemed to belong to the mate—during the long days of the voyage, and she knew exactly what it contained. From the stores put away under the bunk she selected a large new sheet, which she concealed under her dress; a small stock of needles and thread, a box or two of matches, some hooks and line, and a stick of dynamite, evidently meant for some forgotten fishing purpose. There was nothing in the shape of a knife, much to her regret; and there was a good deal of clothing that she would have liked to carry away; but it would not do to take more than she could easily conceal. So she made an end of her preparations, and sat down to wait once more.

There was no moon that night until very late, and darkness came down so close on the stroke of four bells that Vaiti felt sure they were very near the equator. No one came near her, and tea seemed to be unusually late. The anchor-chain roared home soon after dark, the ship lay very still, and there was a good deal of running about on deck. Vaiti was confirmed in her anticipations of an uninhabited island by the fact that no boat was to be heard coming off from shore. Not a sound of any kind, indeed, came from the island, and there were no lights on the beach. Some one handed her in her tea by-and-by, and a little later her door was flung open again by the mate.

“Come on out,” he said.

Vaiti followed the mate out of the cabin at once, rather to his surprise. She had made up her mind that anything was better than the Ikurangi, and she was looking out sharply for a chance—any chance—of turning the tables.

It did not look at first as if she were to have one. The dinghy had been swung out when she got on deck, and a couple of men were standing ready to lower away. They were islanders, and she knew that they would befriend her if they could—indeed, their glances showed as much—yet what could they do?

Donahue was nowhere visible. He had planned this business with some forethought, and he wanted to have a chance of casting blame on his subordinate if any inquisitive Government official should incline to look the matter up later on. So he stayed down in his own cabin, pretending to be asleep, and the mate, rather against his will, had to carry out orders alone.

Just as the boat was ready to lower away, one of the men let her go with a run, and she struck the water stern first, with a terrible splash. The mate, screaming curses, ran over to the falls and began to abuse the crew. The dinghy was injured, and they had to haul her up and swing out the whaleboat instead.

This took some little time, and Vaiti was forgotten for the moment—a chance that made her heart beat with eagerness to profit by it.

Two ideas held possession of her—that she must plan to secure a boat, and that she must manage to do the Ikurangi some sort of mischief. Was it to be borne that Donahue should go unpaid? The blood of a hundred fierce Island chiefs made answer.

Concerning the boat, she thought she saw a chance. They were bound to stay a day for wood and water, and that should furnish an opportunity. But the other matter?

If she could only get hold of the ship’s papers and destroy them! That would be satisfactory. She knew, none better, that a ship’s papers are her character, her “marriage-lines” of respectability. Without them a vessel is an illegitimate, furtive creature, every man’s hand against her, every official eye turned coldly upon her. Vaiti would have liked very well to get hold of the Ikurangi’s.

But, careless as Donahue was, the papers were not to be found in the little deck cabin which he used as a chart-room. Vaiti, disappointed, took one of the charts and began studying the position of the ship, with a view to finding out the name of the island off which they were lying. The chart was almost a blank, nothing being marked upon its wide expanse but a number of reefs and two or three atolls—Bilboa Island, Vaka, Ngamaru—dotted hundreds of miles apart in a naked waste of white. Bilboa, an abandoned guano island, of which she had heard something, seemed to Vaiti the most likely of the three spots. Ngamaru, she knew, had a native population, and about Vaka she could for the moment remember nothing, although she knew she had heard something once upon a time. All this part of the Pacific was far removed from the Sybil’s haunts, and indeed from the haunts of any other ship of which Vaiti had ever heard.

It did not seem to be a healthy place for schooners; the reefs round both Vaka and Bilboa were many, and most were marked “Position doubtful.” Donahue was evidently not familiar with either place, for the chart was freshly pencilled over with notes and corrections. Vaiti’s heart leaped up as she looked at the careless work.... She saw a way.

They were still clearing the lumber out of the whaleboat on deck. No one was watching.

Vaiti took a pencil and rubber, and began to do some artistic alterations on the chart, helped by her knowledge of seamanship. In ten minutes she had converted the innocent piece of parchment into a perfect death-trap, rolled it up and replaced it, put back the rubber and pencil, and slipped out again on deck, where she sat down on a coil of rope and waited.

In another couple of minutes the boat was in the water, and the mate called rudely to Vaiti. She came without a word, covering her face with her dress, and sobbing bitterly. She stumbled as she walked; you would have sworn she was weak, broken in spirit, and utterly helpless.

If the mate felt any compassion, he did not dare to show it. They shoved off, two natives at the oars. Vaiti, sobbing effectively behind her hands, kept a sharp look-out with the corner of one eye as they slid across the dark water, but she could see nothing save a faintly glimmering line of grey shore, and hear nothing but the humming of the surf on the reef.

As soon as they reached the shallow water near the shore, the mate took Vaiti by her arm and roared, “Out you go!”

Sobbing afresh, in the most natural and convincing manner in the world, she obeyed.... It was dark, and the native who rowed bow oar never knew that she whipped his knife dexterously out of his belt as she passed him.

“Why are you marooning me?” she wailed, as she waded through the warm, shallow water towards the shore.

The mate leaned out of the boat, now fading fast away into the starry gloom, and shouted as he disappeared:

“To pay for Delgadas Reef and the Margaret Macintyre!”

Vaiti, who had reached the shore, almost sat down with the shock. So that was it! that was it! The pearl-shell lagoon out of which she, almost unaided, had “jockeyed” the schooner Margaret Macintyre, some months before, was bringing in a crop other than pearls—of which last, indeed, the canny Scot who had financed the working of the place had had very much the larger share.

Well, things must be taken as they were found. The soft tropic night stirred gently round her. The stars were large and golden; they shone in the still lagoon like little moons. Palm trees waved somewhere up in the dusk above, striking their huge rattling vanes together with the swing of the night-breeze. It was land, safe, solid land, and the sand was warm and soft, and Vaiti was tired. She walked a little way up the beach, stretched herself under a pandanus tree, and went to sleep....

Some hours later she woke, with the dim, mysterious volcano-glow of the tropic dawn in her eyes, and a curious feeling of disquiet about her heart. Still half asleep, she saw the long grey shore sloping down to the silent lagoon, the ink-coloured pandanus trees standing up against the dull orange sky, the leaning stems and stumps of coco-palms, dark and formless in the shadow. She shut her eyes and tried to sleep again.

No use. That nameless disquiet—now almost fear—still stirred at her heart. She opened her eyes once more, and looked about. A little more light—the touch of a glowing finger away in the east—a clearer defining of the cocoanut stumps, snapped off near their roots in the last great hurricane.... One of the stumps was oddly shaped—almost like a human figure. She could have fancied it was a rude image of a sitting man, only that the profile, against the lightening east, was featureless, and there was nothing to represent the hands.

“I will not be frightened by a rotten cocoanut tree,” thought Vaiti. “I will sleep again till it is light. Am I not a sea-captain’s daughter, and the descendant of great Island chiefs, and shall I fear the fancies of my own mind?”

Determinedly she closed her eyes again, and lay very still. The dawn wind began to stir; the ripples crisped upon the beach; the locusts in the trees broke out into a loud chirr-ing chorus. And as the day broke silver-clear upon the shore, Vaiti, still lying on the sand, felt that some one, in the gathering light, was watching her as she lay.

Wary as a fox, she opened her dark, keen eyes without stirring her body ... and looked straight into a face that was bending almost over her ... a face hooded by a black cloth that hid the head and brow, and only left to view ... O God! O God! what was it?

The thing was featureless. Nose, eyes, and mouth were gone. In the midst of a cavern of unspeakable ruin the ghastly throat gaped vacant. Two handless, rotting stumps of arms waved blindly about—feeling—feeling....

Could it hear? Some instinct told the girl that it could. Softly as a snake she writhed out of the reach of those terrible groping arms.

It did hear. It sprang blindly forward—it snatched.

With one leap Vaiti was on her feet. Never looking back, she fled down the open beach, the sand spurting behind her as she ran. She heard a dull padding in her rear at first; it soon grew faint, but she ran on blindly, long after it had died away—ran, while the sun climbed over the horizon and cast down handfuls of burning gold on her uncovered head—ran, while the beach grew parchment-white and dazzled back the heat into her face like an open furnace—ran till at last her over-driven body gave way, and the sand spun round and the sky turned red before her eyes. Then only she staggered into the shade and dropped down upon a green mattress of convolvulus creeper to rest.

And now, when she had leisure to think and strength to cast off the haunting horror of that inhuman face, she knew what Donahue had done.

This was not Bilboa, the uninhabited guano island that she had feared. This was infinitely worse—it was Vaka, the leper isle!

She remembered that she had once heard a dim rumour of Vaka and its ghastly leper people—the remnant of a plague-smitten tribe long ago forcibly exiled there from one of the fierce western groups. No ships ever called at this graveyard of the living; it was supposed that the cocoanuts and fish of the island provided sufficient food for the people, and no one cared to run the chance of their stowing away and escaping, especially as they were known to be both daring and treacherous on occasion. Donahue had indeed laid his plans well for the most hideous revenge that the heart of man or devil could conceive. A few weeks or months in this charnel-house of horrors, where the very air must reek of contagion, and what would it avail her if, after all, some stray, storm-driven vessel should rescue the castaway? Better, then, that she should stay and die among the other nameless nightmare horrors that walked these stricken shores.

No! Vaiti, sitting cross-legged on the netted vines and staring grimly out to sea, then and there took resolve that such a fate should not be hers.... Sharks were uncertain, if you really wanted them; but the stick of dynamite she had taken from the mate’s cabin was safe and sure. If she failed in using it for the special purpose she had planned, she would put it in her mouth and light the fuse.... There would be no more trouble after that. And as for the flies—one did not feel them, of course, when one was dead.

All the same, she did not mean to die if she could avoid it, and, as the first step towards helping herself, she knocked some nuts off a young palm, and took her breakfast off the refreshing water and juicy meat. Then she cut a length of bush rope, looped it round the tallest palm in sight, and set her feet inside the loop, so that she could work herself up to the top of the tree, monkey-on-stick fashion, leaning against the rope. When she got into the crown of the palm she knelt among the leaves, holding on tightly, and looked right and left over the island.

It was a pure atoll, an irregular circle of feather palms lying on the sea like a great green garland set afloat. The inner lagoon was several square miles in extent, but the land was not more than a few hundred yards wide at any point, and there was no soil to speak of. The palms, the scanty, pale green scrub, the mop-headed pandanus trees, the trailing creepers, all sprang out of pure white coral gravel and sand. The scene was lovely as only a coral atoll can be—the jewel-green water of the inner lagoon, shaded with vivid reflections of lilac and pale turquoise, the stately circled palms, the wide, white beach enclasping all the island like a frame of purest pearl, the burning blue of the surrounding sea, all combined to form a picture bright as fairyland and sparkling as an enamelled gem set upon a velvet shield.

But Vaiti, while she saw and admired the loveliness of the scene, also recognised its barrenness as only an islander could. No fruit, no roots, little fresh water—nothing, in fact, but cocoanut and pandanus kernels, eked out by a little fish.... The lepers must often go hungry.

The hot day turned suddenly chill as Vaiti recalled those blind, snatching, handless arms. They came of a cannibal race, these Vaka folk. What if she had not waked? What if, wearied as she well might be, she slept too long and too soundly in the night that was to come?